“We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid,” Obama said at the fundraiser. “They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

Maybe it’s just me, but I fail to see the hope and unity in an American presidential candidate who doesn’t bother to attack his political opponent (that would be McCain), but instead launches a particularly nasty name-calling political attack against ordinary American voters.

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Helen takes challenges to her position as “gotchas”. I think the reason for this is that she “knows” she’s right, and can’t answer the challenges.
I agree with Y that many of the challenges are the result of her inconsistencies – which it seems to me, she doesn’t see, or just accepts. Her response at one point is that inconsistencies are inconsistencies. They exist in life. Brian is probably also right – that they’re unimportant to her because her primary focus is art and literature – imagination…where humans can fly, perhaps, because reality doesn’t matter. Still, once you enter the world of politics, reality _does_ matter…and we ignore that fact at our peril. Ghandi succeeded in changing the system because the British were decent moral people who didn’t slaughter him and his followers. If he had used the same non-violence method in a different society, the outcome might not have been particularly desireable. Likewise with King. In fact, it’s a tribute to the inherent decency of the American population that King and his non-violent followers were not slaughtered. The mantle of greatness, therefore, doesn’t fall upon Ghandi and King, it belongs to the people who didn’t kill them, saw the justice of their demands and adjusted the policies of the societies in which they lived.
She says she’s had an epiphany…I suspect she will no longer be answering “challenges”. Which of course, ends discussion. She will simply lecture us.

Ymarsakar

Many fake liberals don’t know any better since they are very young and inexperienced. Helen does not have those two excuses for why she tolerates illogic and changing her stances around on a whim.

Ultimately, there’s no connection between say, poverty, racism, war, and totalitarian governments in her view. If there are some connections, it ain’t the same connections as we see.

Thus her state of causality is completely different. When that is true, logic breaks down, because logic assumes that each person is using the same state of causality. Know, Event A goes to Event B. Helen says it’s somehow backwards and thus, the inconsistency is not proof of incorrectness, but proof that she can look past short sighted things like nit picking.

That’s not something I agree with, of course.

For example, we think her views on wealth redistribution and affirmative action is going to create more crime, violence, and racism. Her view is that her policies will cause less violence to whites, less crime, and less racism.

You see how the “state of causality” is completely different here? This isn’t about facts. this isn’t about correlating one factual encounter to another, this is about A leading to B.

Ymarsakar

Also poets aren’t used to having their poems line by line dissected for “inconsistency”. If we did that, every poem would be inconsistent as hecksola.

That’s cause poetry lines aren’t statements of fact so much as imagery. With imagery, the “consistency” is always dependent upon the author’s wishes and whims.

That is not true for political arguments and statements, however. We cannot judge pol args and statements based upon the whim of the person stating them.

suek

Here’s a really relevant article on the societal problems of some blacks. I’d really like to know how Obama would solve them. Some of the solution is easy to see, but if the necessary actions were applied, there’d be holy hell to pay.

By now, I expect everyone’s “gone home”…but it really is applicable, so I thought I’d park it here! Just in case someone happens upon this thread sometime in the future and manages to wade through it to the end!

Deana

suek –

What a well-written piece. I will say, though, that I disagree with one thing.

The author says:
“Regrettably, in low income communities like Shakir’s, the external force compels kids away from educational achievement, in spite of the efforts of some to turn things around. ”

I would argue that the fact that Shakir lives in a low-income community is irrelevant. Why? Because since the beginning, this country has had millions of examples of people who grew in low-income circumstances and yet, their parent(s) still put a priority on education.

Once it is (erroneously) believed that low-income causes the type of situation Shakir is in, it allows people to believe that throwing more money at the problem will help. We already know that it doesn’t.

I suspect the author thinks the same – it’s just that that sentence could have been said differently.

Deana

Ymarsakar

Obama is not going to end the very thing that provides him power and status and prestige.

Just as Palestinian prestige and power comes from the Palestinian problems, so is the same for black power and prestige.

Would blacks have as much influence, prestige, and power if they did not have the problems that people like Arafat could exploit for their own purposes?

The answer is, they would have even more influence if their children hadn’t been aborted by white fake liberal ideologies and their families shattered by white fake liberal welfare. But the wrong black people will have more influence. It won’t be the elites, it won’t be people like Barry and MIchelle Obama.

Btw, Michelle is not a black Afrikan cultured name like Natoisha and so forth. So she has another reason to hate whitey cause her name came from whitey. And maybe she was able to use that name as an advantage, thus providing more guilt and disgust at herself and whitey.

suek

>>Obama is not going to end the very thing that provides him power and status and prestige.>>

Ann Coulter has made this point – not about Obama, but Democrats generally. That is, that Dems contrive problems in order _not_ to solve them, but to have issues to campaign on. Republicans _solve_ problems, and as a result, have no issues to campaign on. I’m sure this isn’t 100% accurate, but I think she’s right – at least in general principle.

>>I would argue that the fact that Shakir lives in a low-income community is irrelevant.>>

I disagree – although I’d agree to this point…it _is_ possible for strong parents to negate the effect of a gang saturated neighborhood, but it’s very tough, needs two parents usually, and even then the children can be “lost”. Now if what you’re saying is that one can have a low-income neighborhood without having a gang saturated neighborhood, you’re probably right, but it’s becoming more and more difficult. It could change over the next 10 years or so, I think, as some of the Iraqi vets come back and move into positions of local leadership. I suspect that the methods they put into practice in dealing with the insurgents will be equally effective in gang neighborhoods. Unless they choose to move away from them – which is what I see as the basic problem – decent people move away from such neighborhoods, leaving them to the scumbags, who then take over. Nature hates a vacuum etc.

Deana

suek –

You are correct – I should have been more specific. I was thinking more along the terms of neighborhoods that are not completely overrun by gangs.

But in a situation where the neighborhood is saturated with gangs, a parent who cares about their kids would make it a priority to move from the neighborhood. I really hate hearing people say, “Well, they can’t. That takes money.” Yes, in part. But it also can be done with reliance on family. And that is the crux of the problem – for so many reasons, families are almost non-existent. We have created a situation where people don’t have to rely on family because the state has taken the place of the family.

So, when we are confronted with situations like Shakir, the first thing people demand is more money for social programs. Few ever say, “Wait a minute. Where are Shakir’s mother’s parents? What about the father and his parents?” There is no shame anymore so these people are let off the hook. Heck – they aren’t even considered as part of the equation in how these types of problems get solved.

Sorry for the length of the response but I just exhausted at the ever increasing demands that programs, schools, hospitals, and so on step up to the plate to fix problems that they were never designed to address when God/nature, whatever you want to call it, designed a BETTER mechanism for addressing these problems: the family and local community participation (through support and when all else fails, shame).

Deana

Ymarsakar

I suspect that the methods they put into practice in dealing with the insurgents will be equally effective in gang neighborhoods.

if the government outlaws gun ownership, there will be no effective COIN and militia building for neighborhoods.

Ymarsakar

If you want an example of anti-citizen proponents of gun control, go here.

Search for Darth and my comments. Also Search for Laughing Wolf’s. Or you can scroll down and read what you like.

suek

>>if the government outlaws gun ownership,>>

You don’t think that after this recent SCOTUS decision that that’s out of the loop for a while at least?

suek

>>when God/nature, whatever you want to call it, designed a BETTER mechanism for addressing these problems: the family and local community participation>>

You probably know I agree with you. I rather think the long term outlook is more along the lines of anticipating the government at some time in the future metaphorically throwing its hands in the air and saying “we’ve tried _everything_ and it hasn’t worked – we’ll just have to take over raising your children ourselves. Universal – mandatory – child care. From birth on. ” And the socialist state is in effect.